racket/collects/stepper/debugger-doc.txt
Eli Barzilay 64739e89a7 more reformatting
svn: r4013
2006-08-09 23:12:00 +00:00

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Preliminary _Debugger_ Documentation
The debugger is structured as an interaction between the program
being debugged and a debugger UI. The program is annotated to
produce a stream of debugger "events" (as defined below) and to
periodically block on a debugger semaphore. The debugger currently
uses the stepper's annotation; changes to the annotation will
be the focus of the next stage of the debugger.
A simple debugger UI is provided as part of the debugger, but
users who want to use the debugger will probably also want
to supply their own UI. For this reason, we describe the interface
to the UI first, and then the working of the current skeleton
UI.
Debugger Events:
A debugger-event is either:
> (make-breakpoint-halt), or
: (-> debugger-event?)
> (make-normal-breakpoint-info mark-list kind returned-value-list)
: (-> (listof mark?) symbol? (listof any?)
debugger-event?)
> (make-error-breakpoint-info message)
: (-> string?
debugger-event?)
> (make-expression-finished returned-value-list)
: (-> (listof any?)
debugger-event?)
> (make-full-mark location label bindings)
: (-> syntax? symbol? (listof identifier?)
syntax?)
NOTE: there is a mistake here, in the sense that the thing made by
'make-full-mark' is not actually a mark. It's a piece of syntax
that represents a lambda expression which when evaluated turns
into a mark. A mark is an opaque data type. Its contents can
be extracted with the expose-mark function:
expose-mark : (-> mark?
(list/p syntax?
symbol?
(listof (list/p identifier? any?))))
Debugger UI (view-controller) signatures:
(define-signature debugger-model^
(go-semaphore
user-custodian
set-breakpoint
restart-program))
(define-signature debugger-vc^
(receive-result
debugger-output-port))
A debugger UI is a unit which imports signature debugger-model^
(name-change suggestions welcomed) and exports signature
debugger-vc^ (ditto).
> go-semaphore: when the user's program halts at a breakpoint,
it will block on this semaphore. Therefore, the UI can
post to this semaphore to allow computation to proceed.
> user-custodian: the user-custodian governs the user's program.
Therefore, the UI can shut down this custodian to halt debugging.
> (set-breakpoint location [name]): (location -> number)
set-breakpoint specifies a location at which to set a breakpoint.
For the moment, this breakpoint will be active only after restarting
the user's program. A location has the following contract:
(list/p number? ; line number
(union string? false?) ; filename
(union number? false?) ; position
> (receive-result event) : (event -> void) The user's program
calls this procedure whenever a debugger event occurs. Note that
a (make-breakpoint-halt) event will occur whenever the user's
program blocks at a breakpoint.
> debugger-output-port : output from the user's program goes
to this port.
Existing mini-UI:
The debugger starts a graphical read-eval-print loop, with the
following bindings:
> go-semaphore: passed through from the debugger
> (events): returns a list of all events that have occurred during
the execution of the program.
> user-custodian: passed through from the debugger.
In addition, the mini-UI prints a message to the grepl whenever
an event occurs (which is cheerfully accepted as input the next
time the user presses return...).